Southern Institute of Technology (SIT)

Success Story Southern Institute of Technology (SIT)

Thanks to the power of Allied Telesis Management FrameworkTM (AMF), SIT now enjoy simplified and automated network management Overview

The Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) is a New Zealand tertiary education institution, with campuses in Invercargill, CUSTOMER PROFILE Christchurch, Queenstown and Gore. SIT also runs a distance learning facility called ‘SIT2LRN’. Southern Institute

In 2012, SIT began the process of upgrading their network of Technology infrastructure. They needed a robust, scalable solution that SIT is a large educational institution with multiple campuses would fulfil all their network requirements, both now and into throughout the South Island of New Zealand. the future. SIT Invercargill SIT were already satisfied customers of Allied Telesis, and ■■ Invercargill is home to the major SIT campuses. were using their second generation of Allied Telesis equipment. ■■ The main campus is located at 133 Tay Street, and has Because of this history, SIT decided to choose Allied Telesis once many facilities including a student gym, bookshop and again to provide the technology and expertise to build their new cafe, as well as support services. network. ■■ A second ‘Downtown’ campus is located on Don Street. This campus is a creative zone, housing Art, Allied Telesis, in partnership with Spark Digital, have deployed a Design, Photography, Film, Animation, Music, Audio, high-performing and widespread network at SIT. It is a large and Fashion, Journalism and Drama students. complex network, that connects all campuses, but thanks to the ■■ There are around 5,000 students on campus, and power of Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF), they another 8,000 around New Zealand studying via now enjoy simplified and automated network management. SIT2LRN. SIT offers variety and culture, and maintains small class sizes to ensure plenty of hands-on experience.

Invercargill, New Zealand Invercargill is the southernmost city in New Zealand, and one of the southernmost cities in the world. It is the commercial center of the Southland region.

Invercargill is also the gateway to some of New Zealand’s most beautiful scenery and destinations including the Southland heartland, Stewart Island, Fiordland, the Catlins and Central Otago.

2 | Allied Telesis Success Story alliedtelesis.com SIT choose Allied Telesis

To upgrade their network infrastructure, SIT needed a world- The Allied Telesis solution also provides the power of Allied class vendor, with proven technology, to help them move to a Telesis Management Framework (AMF), which allows the entire future-proof, next-generation solution. network to be managed very simply, with many day-to-day tasks completely automated. They had already enjoyed several years’ worth of high- performance online connectivity with two different generations Partnership with Spark Digital of Allied Telesis equipment. Starting with a network based Allied Telesis worked in partnership with Spark Digital, the around the SwitchBlade 4000 Series core chassis switch, SIT premium system integrator in New Zealand. Spark Digital then upgraded their network to use the extremely successful provides end-to-end information technology solutions that SwitchBlade x908 Modular Chassis core switches. enable businesses to operate with confidence, improve performance and realize opportunities for growth. For their latest upgrade, and against competing rivals, SIT chose a third Allied Telesis solution. This time, the solution was based Stephen Wilcox, Lead Technical Consultant from Spark Digital around the SwitchBlade x8100 Series of next-generation core Southland, managed the new network deployment at SIT. chassis switches. Previous experience with the reliability and Stephen is very experienced with Allied Telesis equipment, performance of SwitchBlade-based networks encouraged having partnered with them on many large network deployments SIT to again select Allied Telesis to build an up-to-date, high- over many years. Stephen provided SIT with local knowledge and performance solution. Their cost-effective new network is the expertise to ensure a smooth upgrade. flexible, scalable, and, like their previous iterations, come with great service and support. “I’ve worked with Allied Telesis coming up to 20 years now, with their solutions being a great fit for education providers. They stack up very well against the competition, are high-value, and offer comprehensive solutions with industry leading features” Stephen Wilcox Lead Technical Consultant - Spark Digital Southland

3 The network requirements

SIT required their new network to be robust, scalable and easy all the different traffic types of today’s modern converged to manage. It had to support the latest advances in technology networks; support services such as digital telephony, for teaching, their SIT2LRN distance learning programs, as well as streaming video; and store large amounts of data. the increasing online connectivity of students and staff. ■■ Business continuity and disaster recovery The new network had several key requirements. It needed to The network design had to cater for the deployment of a provide: business continuity site at the downtown campus, where the downtown data center could mirror the main data center. ■■ High availability This was to ensure no disruption to network services. The The network had to be extremely resilient. It had to ability to recover data in the unlikely event of a catastrophic eliminate single points of failure in the network, and ensure failure was to be provisioned from the Christchurch campus. continuous access to online resources and applications. Traffic had to continue to flow, even if an access or ■■ Scalability distribution switch, cable, or network interface failed. The network had to be future-proof, providing a scalable platform that can easily be added to as SIT employ new ■■ High performance next-generation technologies, and add online services. SIT needed a high performing network to meet the needs of their several thousand on-campus students and staff, as ■■ Ease of management well as several thousand more students using the SIT2LRN SIT’s network covers multiple campuses around New distance learning program. The network had to manage Zealand’s South Island. Such a large complex network had to be easy to configure, maintain, and grow.

4 | Allied Telesis Success Story alliedtelesis.com The solution

INVERCARGILL MAIN CAMPUS Members x510

x610 x600-24

Switch SBx8100 x8100 x510 Master Blade

x610 x600-24 Internet Switch SBx8100 x8100 Blade

x610 Members x600-24 x610 Switch x600-24 SBx8100 Members x8100 Blade x510 Data Center Servers 1 WAN x510

x610 Members x600-24 Data Center 2 x510 CHRISTCHURCH CAMPUS INVERCARGILL DOWNTOWN CAMPUS x610 Members x600-24

x510 GORE CAMPUS

10 Gigabit link 1 Gigabit link WAN Link aggregation QUEENSTOWN CAMPUS

The new network has a three tier design. The network core The network distribution layer uses Allied Telesis x610 consists of three SwitchBlade x8100 Series next-generation Series Layer 3 switches. The x610 switches use Allied chassis switches – two at the main Invercargill campus, and Telesis Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCStackTM) to create a one at the downtown campus. This is the 3rd generation single virtual unit out of multiple physical devices. The Allied Telesis network at SIT utilizing SwitchBlade chassis distribution layer uses link aggregation to connect to the core switches, underscoring the power, performance and SwitchBlade core and also to the edge switches. reliability of the platform. The SwitchBlade core chassis are interconnected with 80Gbps bandwidth, which can The network edge uses Allied Telesis x510 Series switches, be increased even further. They also employ 10 Gigabit which also use VCStack, further increasing the resilience of connectivity to servers, storage and distribution switches. the design.

Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) | 5 The key element that ties the SIT network together is the Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF), which allows the entire network to be managed as a single virtual device. AMF provides: ■■ Centralized management of the entire network, and any or “Installing AMF was a lot simpler all switches, at once than we had anticipated. The ■■ Automatic backup of firmware, configuration and other important files for every network device actual deployment of AMF, we ■■ Automatic upgrade of firmware across all devices in the did essentially in one evening, network ■■ Automatic recovery and provisioning when replacing or and that was across around 90 adding new units switches in 5 different locations. It was very straightforward.” Through this combination of robust features, AMF drives lower network operating expenses by reducing the complexity and level of effort and expertise required to maintain the network. Stephen Wilcox Lead Technical Consultant - Spark Digital Southland The new SIT network infrastructure was deployed, and then AMF switched on once the remote campuses were setup with their new AMF capable switches. Installing AMF onto the network was extremely simple, even in this large multi-campus environment. SIT have a close partner in Spark Digital, who will continue to provide ongoing support for their new network. Benefits of the new solution

The new network has provided SIT with a powerful solution that ■■ Scalability has more than met the key requirements: SIT will keep evolving to keep pace with technology, and its use in improving educational outcomes. Their new ■■ High availability network is flexible and scalable, with additional bandwidth The new network has provided SIT with always-on access as easy as adding new line-cards to the SwitchBlade core to their online resources and applications, to support their chassis switches, or another switch to a VCStack, along with modern learning environment. This ensures students can connecting more high-speed fibre links. This will enable make use of technology as an integral part of their studies, SIT to quickly deploy new online services and technologies and is an important part of the quality of education SIT is to meet business initiatives, and offer further learning able to offer. opportunities.

The SwitchBlade core chassis are incredibly resilient, ■■ Ease of management comprising dual controllers, and dual hot-swappable power The new network covers multiple campuses, and yet supplies to maximize uptime. With VCStack creating virtual is extremely easy to manage. AMF has simplified and units out of multiple physical devices at the distribution and automated many day-to-day administration tasks like edge, the network has no single point of failure, creating a backing up the network, upgrading firmware, and installing high-availability solution for data connectivity. or replacing units. Many of these previously time-consuming tasks can now be carried out across the complete network ■■ High performance with a single command. The increased bandwidth of the network supports the several thousand on-campus SIT students, as well as thousands more using the SIT2LRN distance learning program. Multiple aggregated 10 Gigabit links connect the network core with distribution switches, as well as servers and storage. This provides staff and students with high- speed data access, and supports services such as streaming video and digital telephony.

Powerful Quality-of-Service (QoS) features on the switches prioritize and manage bandwidth for different services, to guarantee high performance and improve the user experience.

■■ Business continuity For a modern education provider like SIT, continuity of operations is key with many thousands of students relying on the availability of their learning environment. The new network is a high-availability solution, with high-bandwidth between the core chassis switches at the main and downtown campuses. This provides high-speed access to the data centers at each location, and a data-mirroring solution between the data centers maximizes availability.

Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) | 7 Summary

AMF has provided SIT with a network solution which is simple to manage, change or grow. The powerful combination of features “AMF has definitely lived up to our expectations. Two key reduces the time and cost of network management. benefits I was looking for were:

The next-generation network now operating at SIT is providing Centralized backup of all the configuration and a high-performance, high-availability online solution. It is flexible firmware files: With a network the size of SIT, it is and scalable, and for a complex converged multi-site network, absolutely key to make sure you’ve got a current backup remains extremely easy to manage. This has increased the ability of your configuration files, especially if you need to replace of SIT to utilize digital educational resources, supports their great a switch. AMF automatically backs-up the entire network campus facilities, and provides an environment conducive to every day. today’s learning.

Change management: Networks this size have Both Spark Digital and Allied Telesis look forward to continuing complex configurations and sometimes even making a their partnership with SIT to keep their online capabilities at the small change can take a couple of hours. From my direct forefront of technology. experience, after installing AMF in SIT’s network, a change which would have taken 2 hours previously, we can now do in literally 10 minutes – that is to make the same change, across the entire network. So the efficiency of AMF for “In education our students and staff expect a fast, managing a network is fantastic. modern and reliable network. The upgrade has met these requirements and provided SIT with a When you add in the ability to automatically configure new solid platform whilst eliminating the bottlenecks or or replacement switches, and upgrade the firmware across performance issues of the past. Allied Telesis have been the entire multi-site network with a single command, AMF excellent to work with and their gear has lived up to has greatly reduced the burden of network management.” expectations. “

Patsy Eade Stephen Wilcox Human Resources Manager at SIT Lead Technical Consultant - Spark Digital Southland

8 | Allied Telesis Success Story alliedtelesis.com The products

SwitchBlade x8100 Series NEXT GENERATION INTELLIGENT LAYER 3+ CHASSIS SWITCH

Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x8100 Series Advanced Layer 3+ chassis switches are designed to deliver high availability, wirespeed performance, and a high port count. Two control card options, CFC400 and CFC960, provide solutions for medium and large networks. The ability to stack two chassis when using the CFC960 provides a powerful and completely resilient network core solution, which can even be distributed over long distance. x610 Series ADVANCED LAYER 3 GIGABIT ETHERNET STACKABLE SWITCHES

The Allied Telesis x610 series is the high performing and scalable solution for today’s networks, providing an extensive range of port-density and uplink-connectivity options. 24-port and 48-port versions are available with optional 10 Gigabit uplinks and PoE+ ports. The ability to stack up to eight units includes using fiber for long distance stacking. The x610 Series can connect anything from a small workgroup right up to a large business. x510 Series STACKABLE GIGABIT SWITCHES

The Allied Telesis x510 Series of stackable Gigabit switches includes a full range of security and resiliency features, coupled with easy management, making them the ideal choice for network access applications.

Allied Telesis x510 Series switches are a high-performing and feature-rich choice for today’s networks. They offer a versatile solution for enterprise applications.

Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF) is a sophisticated suite of management tools that provide a simplified approach to network management. Common tasks are automated and every-day running of the network made extremely simple. Powerful features like centralized management, auto-backup, auto-upgrade, auto-provisioning and auto-recovery enable plug-and-play networking and zero-touch management.

Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) | 9 About Allied Telesis, Inc. Founded in 1987, and with offices worldwide, Allied Telesis is a leading provider of networking infrastructure and flexible, interoperable network solutions. The Company provides reliable video, voice and data network solutions to clients in multiple markets including government, healthcare, defense, education, retail, hospitality, and network service providers.

Allied Telesis is committed to innovating the way in which services and applications are delivered and managed, resulting in increased value and lower operating costs.

Visit us online at alliedtelesis.com